The present invention relates to a skydiving equipment with a centralized fastener, to distribute the tension forces of a drogue parachute on the parachute pack while being able, in particular, to suspend its user(s) in a horizontal position during the free fall, and ensuring the holding of the deployment bag until the desired opening.
It is known that the parachute pack consists of the equipment where the canopies are packed; it includes a pack which comprises the reserve or upper container and the main or lower container, and primary and secondary straps, which constitute the harness strap device in order to tie-down the reserve and main containers.
During tandem skydiving with a passenger or a load, a first small parachute is released before the opening of the main parachute.
This first parachute is smaller than the main parachute, it is not packed in the main container and it is opened prior to the opening of the main parachute.
This first parachute is called the drogue parachute and in the end enables the extraction of the main parachute when a desired altitude is reached.
Further in the description, “drogue bridle” will designate the strap which connects the drogue parachute to the deployment bag. It will be considered that the drogue bridle is located between the fastening means to the parachute pack and the drogue parachute.
The European patent EP-A-1 222 119 and the French patent FR 2915735 in the name of the applicant, disclose some devices for which the central fastening of the drogue bridle to a parachute pack main container is achieved thanks to a stop which is captured by the closure of the main container flaps.
These two devices are intended to enable the positioning of the tandem couple in free fall in a horizontal position with a closure of the main container which is associated to the locking of the drogue bridle.
However, in the current central fastener devices, when the load is very heavy, it is noticed that the traction of the drogue bridle, whether it is single or with multiple fastening tabs, sometimes exerts a considerable tension on the stop and the closing loop, this tension being transmitted to the ripcord cable which holds the flaps in a closed state, such that the central fastener devices require more effort than the prior art devices to manually extract the ripcord because the latter have a 3-ring-system type force-reduction unit which is located between the drogue bridle and the parachute pack, which provides a mechanical advantage enabling the release of the drogue parachute and the opening of the main container with minimum effort.
One of the consequences which is inherent to this drawback of the prior art devices is that it causes incidents such as “hard to pull the main handle”. Another drawback of the current central fastener devices is the complication that the closure of the flaps can generate, such a complication being caused by the presence of the stop which prevents the closing flaps from superimposing and can induce errors in the routing of the closing loop at the time of the packing sequence.